[Sportschosun reporter Kim Joon-seok] Announcer-turned-TV personality Do Kyung-wan appeared on Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant without being edited out, despite the ‘poverty cosplay‘ controversy surrounding his frugal lifestyle.
Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant, which aired on the 29th on KBS 2TV, was presented as a seventh-anniversary special. Do Kyung-wan and actress Oh Yoon-ah appeared on the show that day.
MC Boom introduced Do Kyung-wan as “the former KBS star announcer who left home and came back in through the front gate.”
Referring to his two consecutive appearances, Do Kyung-wan said, “Looking at figures such as the per-minute ratings, perhaps we can be optimistic,” and expressed hope of becoming a regular.
When Boom joked, “The ratings only go up when Jang Yoon-jeong appears,” Do Kyung-wan retorted, “I should be the one performing on the big stage.”
The controversy arose over Do Kyung-wan’s frugal habits shown on the program on the 22nd. At the time, dismayed by a downturn in the stock market, he said his bank balance was 250,000 won.
The show also showed him having the children collect water to flush the toilet to save on maintenance fees, turning off the living-room air conditioner in the middle of summer, or removing the batteries from the remote.
Afterward, online commenters said it was difficult to relate to the frugal lifestyle shown on the program, given reports that Do Kyung-wan and his wife, Jang Yoon-jeong, had purchased a luxury home worth around 12 billion won. Some users criticized it as “poverty cosplay.”
Recently, a post appeared on an online community saying that a request for a review of Do Kyung-wan’s segment had been filed with the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC).
The post’s author said they had raised the question of whether the program violated Article 14, “Objectivity,” of the Broadcasting Review Regulations, and argued that the issue was not the frugal lifestyle itself but the program’s presentation and editing, which could lead viewers to interpret it as financial hardship.
Amid this controversy, Do Kyung-wan’s segment aired that day without any separate mention of the issue.
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